Numerous systems are known for monitoring the surroundings of a vehicle. Such systems are used, for example, for accident prevention (“pre-crash”), automatic cruise control (ACC), or observation of the blind spot with respect to the visual field of the driver. Systems are used for operating various sensors. Radar sensors, lidar sensors, ultrasound sensors, and video sensors, for example, are known. For example, radar sensors are used to determine the exact location of an object which is present in the surroundings of the vehicle. One conventional method for this determination of location is triangulation. In using the various sensors, however, consideration must be made for the fact that the sensors have different detection ranges due to their underlying physical processes. For this reason, it is often useful to combine the various sensors. Overall, this results in complex systems because of the necessity to combine the various sensor measurement data.
In addition, it must be noted that most systems are not capable of classifying objects which are present in the vehicle surroundings. A radar sensor is generally not able to distinguish between a living object, such as a pedestrian, and an inanimate object. Furthermore, radar sensors as well as ultrasound sensors have the disadvantage that in the immediate vehicle surroundings they are able to detect only a small region of the surroundings because of their small aperture angle. Thus, a large number of sensors is required if the entire vehicle surroundings are to be detected using such sensors.